Should I remember the payment before getting it authorized? - paypal

I get it that Paypal SDK (backed by REST API) has three steps:
Create a payment
payment = Payment({...})
payment.create()
return redirect( redirect_url( payment))
The customer pays and authorizes payment from within Paypal
Redirect to our site where we execute payment, thus transferring money
Should I store the created payments at step 1? I would thus capture all payment attempts, whether successful or not. Or can I create a payment, and not remember it until step 3? That is, record only the successful payments (within their respective Invoices). Is there any reliability or security issue or other harm if I do not store it at step 1?
I suspect not being able to roll back failures.
In Paypal terms, they are of sale intent and are meant for payment of invoices for services rendered. Card data do not touch our servers, I am deferring to Paypal on handling it.
I use paypalrestsdk, Paypal's Python SDK.

Previously, it was tricky to get the PaymentId back when PayPal redirects the page back to your server to authorize you, as there was no way to get PaymentId on 3rd step
However, now, the PaymentId is returned back as a part of the URL as shown here in 3rd step :
http://localhost/Server-SDK/PayPal-PHP-SDK/sample/payments/ExecutePayment.php?success=true&paymentId=PAY-62998961VU1587338KR3AXWQ&token=EC-4YC2489096181311L&PayerID=REABK2UGK7PLW
As you can see it has paymentId which is the Id that you need to store.
So, to answer you dont need to store anything till 3rd step.
Additional Note:
However, if you have some complicated logic/service you want to provide. E.g. send them an email reminder(if you have their emailId), to remind them if they abandoned your card, etc. However, there are many ways to do that besides using these steps.

Related

Can i use pre-approval using PayPal website payments pro?

I am making a system in which user permits pre-approval of amount. I've used pre-approval with chained payment. But the problem is that my customer gets redirected to PayPal site and also he/she must have a PayPal account or need to create one. So can i make pre-approval payment using PayPal website payment pro? So my customers will not get redirected to PayPal account. And the process becomes more fast? Note :- I don't want to use authorization and capture method. Thanks.
Edit
One more question :- If i make the website in the UK and the currency in GBP, can I still use the American Paypal account for this?
Auth and Capture is what you're asking for, but then you say you don't want it..?? That's what gives you the functionality you're after, though.
You could do a $0 auth and then run DoReferenceTransaction when you're ready to process the payment as opposed to capturing an actual auth if you want.
Those are your only options when working with Pro, though, and it would give you the same sort of preapproval experience for the buyer.
Here are the steps to accomplish what you're after.
Use DoDirectPayment to run a $0 Authorization (card verification). Users will enter their credit card details directly into a form on your site without any redirection to PayPal (and without any knowledge PayPal is being used at all unless you notify them some way.)
Save the transaction ID that you get form this card verification into your transaction history for the customer in your database. This ID is what will be used to process future payments using that credit card.
When you're ready to process a payment for this customer, pull the ID out of the database and use it with a DoReferenceTransaction request to process any amount you need to.
So the card verification is your preapproval, and then running reference transactions are the same as running Pay requests with a Preapproval key. Both methods accomplish the same thing, but one is with direct credit cards and the other is not.
If you're using PHP you can use this PayPal PHP SDK to make all of the API calls very quick and easy for you. If you're using some other language then there are SDKs available for those as well I'm sure.
Please correct me if i am wrong, #Andrew Angell #Ved Pandya
Auth and Capture or Capture payments later method allows you to do direct payment, but it comes with additional charges, which might not suitable for crowdfunding model as refund/ cancel payment is very frequent
Auth and Capture: You are required to pay $0.30 for each "Card Verification Transactions"
Capture payments later: You are required to pay $0.30 for each "Uncaptured Authorization" that you triggered
https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/merchant-fees

Verifying paypal account

I am building website which requires customer to update paypal account.
Is there anyway to check the reality of customer's account?
When my customer fill out their paypal account in my site, I want them to be directed to paypal login page to login and paypal will return the result.
Does paypal api support this situation?
Pretty much any implementation of PayPal you choose would follow the flow you mentioned.
Payments Standard would allow you to create basic buttons or create an HTML form and POST directly to PayPal to process. It would send the user to PayPal for login and approval to complete the payment. The transaction details would include the payer status (verified or unverified) as well as the address status (confirmed or unconfirmed) and lots of other details about the order.
Express Checkout is basically the API version of Standard, but it's much more advanced and open to integrate in the way that works best for your site or application. In this case, some of buyer/transaction data is available during the process within your app through API requests and responses, and then you can also get to it via transaction details after the fact just like payments standard provides.
Another option would be to use Adaptive Payments, but if you're doing a general payment of any kind you probably don't need that. That's what you would use if/when you start wanting to split payments among multiple receivers within the same transaction, setup preapproval profiles, etc.
If you happen to be working with PHP my class library for PayPal will make the API calls very simple for you.
You could do what PayPal itself does when you register. Send them a few cents and have them tell you how many when they get it. The payment itself will fail if the account doesn't exist, and telling you how many cents proves that they own the account.

Paypal Rest API : Difference between Paypal execute and auth-capture

I am developing a system in which I have to integrate paypal. In the backend the system itself uses an internal API(I do have many systems communicates to core like web, mobile app etc). Consider the case of web, I am planning to approve the payment using the Paypal Rest API, so the user will be redirected to Paypal and approves the payment and then the system communicates with the internal api and then the actual payment has to be completed.
When going through the docs, I can see Payment->Execute need to be done after the approval. Also I can see Authorize and, Capture later as in other payment systems. So I am confused with the significance of execute method?
When you create the payment, you can the intent of the payment to be 'sale', 'authorize' or 'order'. For each of these you need to call payment->Execute, but the difference is in what happens after
When set to sale, payment will immediately be processed and funds transferred as soon as possible.
When set to authorize, you get back an authorization_id. The funds will be on hold for 3 days within which you use that id to to a capture on the payment to have the transaction processed.
When set to order, you get back an order_id. The order does not put fund on hold, but you can call authorize against the order to put the funds on hold and later call capture on that order to process the transaction and transfer funds.

How to test buyer side of a Credit Card transaction on PayPal Website Payments Pro?

We are running an e-commerce web site on Ruby on Rails and for the processing of Credit Cards we use the ActiveMerchant plugin to interface to our PayPal Website Payments Pro account using our API credentials.
As part of the checkout process we first call the authorize function on our gateway object and then, after some further checks, we perform the capture part.
We have lately been experiencing a bug where an amount gets reserved twice on a customer's account: one charge being only the authorization and the second being the final purchase. So to the client it looks like we are billing him twice (once for authorization, once for final purchase) while we are actually receiving the money only once and the "second charge" on his account is simply an authorization that we don't clear for some reason. (This seems to happen particularly when PayPal FMF rejects our transaction and we re-process.)
I am trying to troubleshoot this by creating PayPal Sandbox Accounts for Buyer and for Seller. I am running through the code line by line via Rails Console and simulating different conditions to try and replicate the error. However, my successful Credit Card transactions only appear in my "seller"/"merchant" account and not in the "buyer" account on the PayPal Sandbox so I cannot see what the effect of my code sequence is having on a customer's card. This post seems to indicate that that is just the way things are and that it is indeed not possible to test the effect on Buyer Credit Card side. This post suggests using PayPal Express Checkout but that is not what we need on our site as we're specifically looking at Credit Card transactions here that are integrated to our site.
How can I test the effect of my code on a client's Credit Card? Is there perhaps something I missed in PayPal or is there maybe some mode/log/monitor in ActiveMerchant that I can use to see this? I need to find the line of code that is causing us to authorize twice.
If the initial transaction is being rejected by FMF, and then you reattempt another transaction this would cause a second hold on the buyers card as this would be a completely different transaction attempt. The bank may have approved the first transaction, but then the FMF filters declined it based on your settings. As far as the bank is concerned, it is still a valid charge that was approved. So when you run your second attempt, this will cause a second hold on the card for the same amount but for a different transaction.

Paypal payment process in 2 step?

I want to make payment process in 2 step , in first step paypal should collect fund from user account but not transfer to the merchant account .
when i send another request with sucess action at that type paypal should transfer fund to merchant account or if i pass fail action then paypal should refund to user.
is there any way to do this ?
i reefer following URL but cant find solution .
https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=developer/e_howto_api_WPECIntegration#id0861K0T0WY4
Express Checkout is what you want, but there's better documentation available.
Basically, what you're after is Authorization and Capture. When you create your Express Checkout API requests you'll set the PAYMENTACTION to Authorization. Then, when you're ready to process the payment you call DoCapture and pass in the transaction ID you get back from Express Checkout.
No money is processed until the DoCapture call is processed. If you don't end up needing to process it you can simply do nothing, but that would strand the authorization on the user's account for the default period of time depending on their bank. Usually 30 days.
It's a better practice to call DoVoid at that point, which would cancel the authorization and release those funds back to the user's account immediately.
If you want to do the same thing with credit cards directly you can use Payments Pro. The process is almost identical, except there are actually fewer calls involved.
If you're using PHP I would recommend taking a look at my PHP class library for PayPal. It'll make all of this very simple for you, and I can provide 30 min of free training to help you get going if you want, too.